Motet

I “At odds again,” hands moving out of the shadows. And now, now everything seems definite, discrete, fingers webbed with sunlight the tree lets through, arms still in their own time, circling, catch up, catch hold at the wrists, like cell chains in a watchcrystal completing themselves. Together again. Shoulders, torso, each one of us one, once more. It is hard to imagine minutes just past. II “At odds again,” hands moving against the wind like loose flapping things, washcloths, words long frayed with careless use. You wanted to say it was beginning to bother you, beginning to wish, wondering if thought in broken light could ever touch itself, reassemble itself. The King, our promise, broken, the sword we imagined gone, hovers like leafmold in the light. Say it, then, the stain of things remains. III “At odds again,” elbow cupped into wet leaves. After love, there are moments of clutter, and no amount of practice will teach you to regard them as anything more than what you lean against catching its buried chill. Keep your fancy to yourself; facts do not fade but are momentarily obscured, the work of hands, touch and its out- come, the absence of touch, and distance, the inevitable space between, shapes all our limitations. IV “At odds again,” knee raised slightly, sunlight and shade, patchwork coverlet. Bits and pieces, the story of each thing connected, end to end, this instant extended in every direction. Not a thing in space or things in spaces or spaces between what space seems occupied for this moment, the next. We are not snowstorms of ourselves, spindrift and curl. The whorl of action is a template in time: the casual shifting of leaves, hands moving, the certain flex of possibility.